


Never Lovelier

by sensiblecat



Series: Emotional Baggage [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-21
Updated: 2008-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:49:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensiblecat/pseuds/sensiblecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another <i>Emotional Baggage</i> sketch, set just after <i>The Unicorn and the Wasp</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Lovelier

  
_We'd be so grand at the game  
So carefree together that it does seem a shame  
That you can't see your future with me  
'cause you'd be, oh, so easy to love_

 _COLE PORTER  
_

She’d looked good as a flapper, Donna reflected, as she sat at her dressing table and admired herself in the mirror. People had noticed. Even the Doctor had noticed. Well, he could hardly _not_ have noticed, could he, when she’d cornered him and kissed him? Got herself a mouthful of anchovies and ginger beer for her trouble. Yuck.

Served her right. The last thing he needed was some woman throwing herself at him, making him even more big-headed than he already was. All through the visit to Eddison Hall he’d had the charm offensive turned up to 11. Just being in the same room as him was like staring right into the sun. Gorgeous, and didn’t he just know it? How did he manage it, a long streak of alien nothing like him?

She’d noticed something about the Doctor. Lots of things, in fact, but mainly that he was at his most giddy and charming just after he’d been upset. He threw himself into it like someone in a play. It was hard to believe he was the man who’d held his dying daughter in his arms just days ago. But that was how he dealt with it all. Otherwise he’d have gone off his trolley. He came pretty close to that at times, as it was.

She was annoyed with herself for kissing him. She’d been the first to insist there’d be none of that kind of thing. After all, he was a long streak of alien nothing and in love with someone else as well. Otherwise he’d have done it with Martha ages ago. Martha had everything, didn’t she? Beauty, intelligence, courage. Perfect companion material, but she’d said he’d hardly noticed she was there, most of the time.

Donna sighed a little and picked up a cotton-wool pad to start taking off her makeup. Then she looked up and saw the Doctor’s figure standing in the doorway to her room. “I’ve got a mirror, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to do the Peeping Tom act. Been there long, have you?”

“D’you mind?” he asked. Nobody could wear a doorway like him, Donna couldn’t help thinking. He knew precisely how to arrange his body against the frame in the most beguiling pose.

She shrugged. “Can’t complain, can I? After all, I threw myself at you even when you were reeking of walnuts and anchovies – you’re bound to think you’ve made a conquest now, aren’t you?”

“And very nice it was,” he agreed, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets and sauntering in. “Did the job perfectly. Most enterprising of you. Gave the servants something to talk about for years, I should think.”

“You really think that’s the first time anybody’s been snogged in a servants’ hall?” she said, dismissively. “Didn’t you ever watch ‘Upstairs Downstairs’?”

He’d come right in now. He plonked his bum against the edge of the dressing table and stood watching her with what he probably thought was an inscrutable expression. Actually, it _was_ pretty inscrutable. You could spend hours looking into those dark eyes and trying to figure out what was going on in that alien head of his.

She couldn’t help thinking it was a pity he’d tasted of walnuts and anchovies, because she was unlikely to get to kiss him again – or any alien, for that matter – and she couldn’t help wondering what he really tasted like.

“Rather unusual circumstances, you’ve got to admit,” he pointed out. “Not that I’m complaining,” he added, hastily. He picked up a little powder puff thingy and blew on it. “All this stuff you ladies plaster on,” he remarked. “Very pervasive across a huge variety of cultures. Do you really think it makes you look better?”

“I’m not sure whether to blush or slap your face for that,” she remarked. “Especially coming from you, Mr- Hair-Gel-By-The-Truckload.”

“Okay, so I’m vain,” he acknowledged. “A bit. Just a little bit, and only with my hair. I like having big hair.” He’d moved on to her eye shadow now and he was flipping around the applicator. “I just wondered why women wear all that stuff, that’s all. Rose used to plaster on the old mascara. Took her about two hours to get ready for anything. Even _me_.”

Well, at least he’s talking about her, Donna thought. She was thinking of another blonde in his life who’d apparently been born wearing perfect eyeliner, ready for a combat zone.

“It’s about confidence,” she explained. “You have to show you’ve made an effort. It’s more for yourself than for the blokes.”

“Oh,” he said. He sounded a little disappointed.

“God, you’re so full of yourself, aren’t you?” she said. “It’s all right for you. All you have to do is turn up with your tie halfway down your shirt and bat your eyelids at the opposite sex – well, any sex, really – and they’re eating out of your hand.” No, she really wished she hadn’t kissed him. She shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction and besides, he’d lose her some day. He lost everybody. How old had he said he was, nine hundred and something?

She’d not thought of it until today, but that must be one of the worst things about his own people not being around any more. There was nobody left who’d live as long as him. It redefined loneliness, didn’t it? He never mentioned it. Well, hardly ever. Blokes just didn’t. Life and soul of the party, him.

“Agatha Christie wasn’t eating out of my hand,” he remarked. “In fact, she didn’t even like me very much.”

“Oh, come on,” she protested. “What gave you that idea?”

“Just something she said.” He sucked in his lips and looked up at the ceiling. “She thought I was only interested in solving the mystery because it amused me.”

“Ooh! Bit close to the bone, that,” she remarked. “And something of a double standard, if you ask me. She didn’t mind making a bob or two out of solving mysteries herself.”

He’d turned his head towards her and his expression had changed. It seemed Agatha had, indeed, hit a sensitive spot. “D’you think I’m a bit…oh, I dunno… _casual_ about it all?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “What’s brought on this sudden bout of introspection, then?”

“Oh, nothing.” He was a terrible liar, thought Donna. “There was this time with Rose, once,” he went on. “We really got on the wrong side of someone very powerful. Oh, you might as well know. It was Queen Victoria.”

“Bad move,” she agreed. “So she wasn’t amused, then?”

He really did look awkward. “We got this bet going. It was Rose’s idea – ten quid if she actually said, ‘I am not amused’. Looking back on it, I kind of see that we came over as rather…” He started pacing about. “You know how it is when the two of you are completely wrapped up in one another and a bit-”

“Full of yourselves?” she prompted.

“I suppose so.” He sighed. “I sorted out some business with a werewolf for her. There was a stonking great diamond and an observatory. Fascinating. And the werewolf was beautiful. Deadly, but beautiful. Killed the lord of the manor.”

“You said the same thing about the giant wasp,” she pointed out.

“No, I said it was _wonderful_. As indeed it was. How could something like that fail to inspire wonder?”

“Rather an academic point, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter how impressive something looks; when it starts killing people, that’s not on.”

She thought about the instinct that had made her throw the pendant into the pool and, thereby, destroy the Vespiform. He’d seemed indignant, like she should have given it another chance, and she’d expected him to tell her off when they got back to the TARDIS, but he’d let it go. He didn’t like killing anything, she realised. He must have really struggled in that war.

“Anyway,” he went on, “Queen Victoria banished us, and then she set up Torchwood. If it hadn’t been for that…”

She knew he was thinking about Canary Wharf. She squeezed his hand. “Can’t beat yourself up about everything,” she reminded him. “Maybe you _were_ a bit of a prat. People are when they’ve in love. Trouble with you is everything ends up being epic. Most of us get to make our mistakes in private, and it doesn’t matter that much.”

His voice went squeaky. “You really think we were in love?”

Donna spluttered. “Oh, come on! I saw you when you’d just lost her! You didn’t know what to do with yourself, you great big space prawn.”

“Oh well, I suppose we live and learn.” He had this way of pursing up his lips that made them look like a rosebud just about to open, usually accompanied by an ever-so-slight furrowing of the brow; the overall effect was so persuasive you had to wonder whether it was completely sincere. This time, she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But she wouldn’t just start believing everything he said. He was far too pretty for that.

“Donna, if you ever do think I’m being a bit of a prat, you will tell me, won’t you?” he fretted.

Bless him. “Promise,” she assured him with a smile. But he had a point, and he’d almost nailed something that had begun to niggle at her. “Trouble is, this life of yours isn’t like normal people’s,” she remarked. “I mean, one day we’re centuries in the future and millions of miles away, the next it’s the 1920s, the day after we’re fighting a war with my mum in the front line. Always meeting new faces, and it passes by in a flash. You can sort of forget they’re real people.”

“I know,” he agreed. For once, she thought he was being completely honest. There was something in his eyes that looked almost like fear. Or doubt, at least. “That’s why I need someone to travel with me,” he said. “In some ways it would be easier if I didn’t. But you end up telling yourself stories about your life, and the trouble is you begin to believe in them.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “After all, they’re brilliant stories. Best I’ve ever been in.”

He seemed to relax at that point. “Got a little surprise lined up for you,” he said, leaning forward with a wide-eyed, sneaky grin. “How d’you fancy a spin in my motor?”

“The TARDIS?”

“Nope, different motor.” He was all bounce again. “Come and meet Bessie.”

“Another of your plucky young assistants?”

“This one isn’t young. And she’s got wheels.”

“I’m taking my life in my hands saying yes to this, aren’t I?”

“Go on.” He positively oozed self-satisfaction; how could anyone so annoying be so lovable? “You’ve only got one of them. Lives, that is. Might as well make the most of it, eh?”

Outside the TARDIS, a gorgeous yellow roadster stood gleaming in the sun. “So that’s where you were all that time,” she said. “Tinkering with your old runabout.”

“Yep. She’s running like a dream.” He held the door open for her. “When you’re used to the TARDIS, a bit of double-declutching is neither here nor there. Your carriage awaits, Miss Noble.”

“Oh my God! We’re going out with me dressed like this?”

“Why not? You were never lovelier, as Fred Astaire once sang to Rita Hayworth. Or will sing, to be more accurate, since it’s still 1926 out here. Particularly gorgeous summer, that was.”

He’d picked a perfect day, with just a hint of a breeze and barely a cloud in the bright blue sky. Off they went, chugging down country lanes lined with honeysuckle and wild roses. They sat on the banks of a river with an old wind-up gramophone beside them and ate cucumber sandwiches, strawberries and cream from a wicker picnic hamper, washed down with the requisite lashings of ginger beer. The Doctor turned out to be a halfway decent dancer, at least on an idyllic summer evening when Bix Beiderbecke was involved.

“ _Carpe diem_ ,” he whispered in her ear. “Seize the day. With this life of mine, sometimes that’s all you can do.”

She hoped he might kiss her; that would have been perfect. But he didn’t, and it was still pretty good.

“Where to next?” he asked her softly, as the sun slipped down below the horizon. He had the most amazing smile, she noticed. It was like – who switched the light on? And when you got close to him – leaving the anchovies out of it – he really did smell quite nice.

“I quite like here and now,” she murmured, happily.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s the one thing I can’t do.”


End file.
